


Faces of Sand

by Ahab2631



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: "It's complicated" doesn't excuse abhorrent behavior SORRYNOTSORRY, A little sorry, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Armchair philosophy probably, Attempted realistic thedas/demons/etc, But I still plan to try to do justice to the complexity of his character, Character opts to play along for a couple different reasons, END SPOILER TAGS, END TRIGGER WARNINGS AND MORE SPOILERS, Endgame: Fen'harel (elements of Solas as a byproduct), Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Foreknowledge, Geas, Hahaha I write, I mean let's not go crazy here buuuut, I'm afraid the rose-colored glasses have come off where Solas is concerned, Influenced by DA:4 teaser, Kidnapping, Lore spelunking probably, Mind Control, Modern Girl in Thedas, Multi, Of course I am, Oh and I might try an actual plot outline like an adult human person, Ok let's do this (cracks knuckles then regrets it immediately), Plot as twisty as a... super twisty thing, Possible brainwashing and, Psychological Torture, Rape via manipulation/drugs/blackmail/etc, Romantic rivalry if I can by any stretch get away with it because YUM-O, SPOILERS TO FOLLOW, See pre-story note ii, Someone else will likely feature along the way, Sort Of, Stockholm Syndrome, TRIGGER WARNINGS AND MORE SPOILERS TO FOLLOW, Taking liberties with all things elvhen, Technically?, They can form pair bonds and go into heat if nothing else, This may get VERY dark before it's over, This may get extremely dark before it's over, Time Travel, Trying to make them more than long-lived humans who had pointy ears and magic, Well the enmity wasn't exactly mutual but w/e, amiright, but only very little, it will show, lime > lemon, whatever you'll see
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-13
Updated: 2019-01-26
Packaged: 2019-10-09 03:13:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17398946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ahab2631/pseuds/Ahab2631
Summary: Maker, but the Herald of Andraste is a child.Literally.At least theythinkso, but what with the language barrier and the fact that she’s got the calm of a veteran soldier, an alien connection to magic, and is probably the single deadliest thing anyone in the Inquisition has ever seen… well, it's leaving people with some questions.Which is a little ironic when you think about it, becausesheseems to know an awful lot. Things about people who’ve never laid eyes on her, for instance, or exactly what in the name of Maferath's chapped asscheeks blew a hole in the sky.It isn't a wonder what people start saying about her, not with what she can do and the way she looks and how she showed up. Not with how badly they need even a little hope these days.If they only knew.Or: The one where sh*t  coming out of left field is the order of the day, and the Inquisition isn't really the point so much as the starting gate.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> I started a DA:I fic a long time ago only to conclude over 200k words in that most of it was terrible and could not be saved.
> 
> This is take two. Uncertain if it will end up being a finished piece.
> 
>  **Things to know:**  
>  **(i)** There’s a “trigger warning” section near the end of the general tags. But I never go into a story knowing everything about it, so tags will change over time. I try not to point it out when they do because spoilers, but if it’s anything scary I’ll nudge you to review them.
> 
>  **(ii)** My stories often don’t follow the model of “the MC will definitely end up with the first person she develops feelings for/takes to bed.” I like complex fiction that reflects how real people work, and broad, sweeping character arcs. Journeys of the heart often happen by consequence.
> 
>  **(iii)** Update schedules aren’t a thing in my world.
> 
>  **(iv)** For the wonderful souls who came here from A Million Voices: Your ongoing love of that monster confuses the ever-loving hell out of me (I know the idea was good, but _I. Mean.),_ and I adore you for it. 
> 
> Going in, I have no plans of changing a single major plot point from AMV, but when it comes to everything else... I’m tinkering.
> 
> Your two favorite minor characters will be here, whole and unadulterated. <3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Vocab for this chapter (words the POV character will know):
> 
>  **Falon:** “friend, guide; Note that the Elves do not use the word 'falon' for anyone but true friends, unlike many other languages that use 'friend' to describe even well-known acquaintances. ”

She is in a ruin.

She knows the word, “ruin.”

She knows the color under her, “gray.” She knows that the tall, still creatures she can see outside the ruin are called “trees,” and that the they are different from the split pillars closer to her, which are made of stone, and not like her or the trees, not exactly. She knows that the thing making her feel so sharp on the outside is called “cold.”

She lifts something to her face, soft and pale and imbued with a spark, and she knows it is a hand, and that it is _her_ hand. But before a moment ago, there was nothing. Nothing, and then air, and lungs to silk it in and back out, over and over, and eyes to see the gleaming sun filtering down, casting an angled column over her.

There are ears, too, to hear a word:

“Falon.”

She pushes herself up off her back, stunned with wonder at the feel of having such power, to simply wish something to be, and to instantly make it so.

She sits up, and she sees before her something new. She glances down at herself and realizes it is like her, another something with a spark like hers, not like the stone or the trees or the sun. But it is bigger, covered in thick furs from its neck down to its feet. It is watching her with eyes like sunlight and chips of gemstone, and it is making color with its breaths, and it does not move.

Another one comes, picking its way over crumbling stone and through holes that were once walls, speaking words that are bored. It is puffed up with furs, too, but smaller underneath than its friend, and its eyes are not gems, they are shifting green clouds. It has a spark, too, but it is less, until it realizes its friend is staring and sees her.

It cants its head and approaches, speaking more strange words. Speaking to _her,_ she knows, but the sounds are nothing more than beautiful music. Some of them bring pictures into her mind or her heart, like steps to a dance, but she does not know enough to follow.

It makes its face into a shape she does not like while it talks, while it looks at her, and she feels a heat inside which makes the sharpness on the outside fade.

The creature puts its hands on the raised stone where she sits and leans in, peering and examining as if she is something… less.

 _Less._ She does not like this word, and frowns.

It makes the creature laugh, and it sings again, more quickly than before, and without stopping, but not just at her now.

She looks over its shoulder at the first one. It has not moved, and it is still watching her. She likes this one better. It is calm, and it does not think she is one of the stones. Something passes between them, from her eyes to his and from his eyes to hers in an instant and it feels.... She does not know a word for this, but she wishes it were the one close to her.

Its friend laughs again. It moves around the stone on which she sits to stand too close. It should not do this, and suddenly she feels hard and big inside, and her skin goes hot.

It reaches out to touch her, as if she belongs to it. As if she is no more than the table under her.

Her face twists and she jerks back with an angry sound, and finds she has raised her hand and flicked the creature hard in the center of its forehead. She moved, even though she did not wish it first, and the skin she struck goes white, and then pink.

She wonders if she has broken the creature, because it has stopped moving and its eyes have gone wide and unblinking.

Its friend laughs. She likes this sound much better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Project Elvhen](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3719848/chapters/8237548) is my bae for all things Elvhen language. Copied and pasted the definition of "Falon" straight from his dictionary.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Worldstate assumptions:  
> No healing magic  
> Health pots take care of major/life-threatening stuff, but tend to ignore more minor bruises and cuts. Because scars are things.

Within an hour of the explosion, a base of operations is established in Haven and a forward camp set up in what is left outside of the Temple of Sacred Ash’s cavernous narthex, as the Left and Right hands of Her Perfection, Divine Justinia V, scramble to figure out what has happened.

At least twice every quarter-hour, some new pack of demons wanders too close to the forward camp, or a piece of irradiated stone plummets from the sky, rattling the ground under their feet, but they work on. Soldiers, and the laysisters from the town below who have been brave enough to volunteer to tend to last rites in the absence of any proper Chantry authority.

Little word comes of what may be left inside - little word, no survivors, and too few bodies - but the first time the booming mirage is set off, it echoes over the peak: a menacing voice like a landslide, the Divine crying out for help, and a man who seems to try - and fail - to save her. It is quieter the second time, when the Inquisition leaders come to see, but still forces some to leave in tears, unable to bear the even the reminder of the sounds of pain from their Divine, and the knowledge of what followed.

Those who remain understand that there is work to do. Some know the mourning can come later. Some know only that this is their duty, whether by vow or basic humanity. But all, even those in periods of numbness, cannot help but remain hypervigilant. So when the first shout goes up in the forward camp, no one is slow to react.

The pounding of feet clad in metal and leather, the unsheathing of swords and arrows covers everything, until enough people realize that the panic is not directed at some new horror coming at them from the temple or surrounding area. It is directly above their heads.

A new Rift has split the sky, but no demons pour forth. Instead, all that can be seen is a luminous, radiant golden figure that appears to be looking calmly down at them, a bundle cradled in its arms.  
  
Without warning, it spills its burden forth, sending it to plummet toward the ground like a stone. It is something small but heavy, long and bent in the middle and wrapped in so much glimmering fabric that it billows around the thing as it falls, landing on the frozen ground with a sickening _thud._

A single beat passes, like the contraction of a heart, before an explosion of light erupts from the side of the little heap - green light, like the Rift, like the blast - and the scar above their heads snaps itself closed with a sound like wind through a tunnel suddenly cut away.  
  
No one has seen a Rift to do that. Close. All they’ve seen them do is spit out horrors.

When the bravest of the soldiers edges forward to nudge at the fabric with the point of his sword in search of the source of light, what they find is that it pours from a tiny, pale hand peeking out of the fabric, attached to a plump arm.

 

*     *     *

 

Forty, fifty blessed feet through the air onto hard flagstone, but she _lived._  It was a miracle, like the way her skin and hair had glowed when she had first been uncovered, shone with the light of the Maker himself. By all rights it should have been terrifying, but it wasn't. People swore they felt  _peace_ coming off her.

She wasn't unscathed, no, but the worst that could be said was that she was scraped up. Except where the fabric was. It was some kind of gown, maybe, or a robe, vastly oversized and looking for all the world as if it was made of strands of muted, spun moonlight twisted together with palest gold. Rumor was that once she got to the Chantry in Haven, nothing they had, not shears, not swords or daggers or arrow points, could cut through it to let the healer look at her. But her head - fine-boned and delicate and _perfect,_ despite its long, pointed ears - wasn’t cracked open. That was something.

In any case, the moment the leadership had gotten one look at her and she'd been deemed _reasonably_ stable, she had been gathered up and rushed to the town, shut away at its heart. That had been a four days ago, and if anyone but the higher ups and that new elf - the one who looks like he doesn’t have a hair on his head and hasn’t seen a new tunic or a sense of humor in the better part of a decade - is allowed in with her, no one is saying anything.

That’s fine, really. Thirty people saw her fall. Thirty more by the time the Seeker and the Commander had come running. Those short minutes had been more than enough to keep _everyone_  talking, and not just in Haven.

Word ripples fast these days, and word of an honest-to-goodness miracle? Of hope? It burns its way across the land like holy fire, received as each person will, but heard none the less.

 

*     *     *

 

"I just checked on her myself," Cassandra reports, tired and tight and confounded. "Every scrape is gone."  
  
She and the rest of the Inquisition leadership, as well as the apostate, Solas, are gathered in the largest study at the back of the Chantry, down a hall not accessible to the public. The room has generous seating, both the more simple chairs  waiting at desks, and generously stuffed wing chairs and sofas covered in rich fabric, all situated near bookcases and bureaus and before low tables. No one is making use of any of them.  
  
The potions had done their work on the child, healing the life-threatening injuries, but what remained should have taken days or weeks to heal under the poultices. The bruising had vanished the first day. "There are scars," she continues, " but they look months old."

The others listen in stony silence, but every one of them - the humans, at least - is also relieved. They have all laid eyes on her, and there is a purity that seems to surround her like a cloud. They have worried after her, each of them in their own way. She has an affect on everyone, it seems, from the way Adan treated her with uncharacteristic gentleness before proper healers arrived, to the way voices and footsteps are hushed when anyone passes her door to avoid any chance of disturbing her rest.

Cassandra prompts Solas, “The Mark?”  
  
He steps forward, raising his chin a hair. “Has shown no change. It continues to grow, and to cause her obvious pain. Its connection to the Breach, however, appears beyond question."

"Tell them the rest," Cassandra says. "Your theory."

He grants a deferential dip of his head, then looks to the Spymaster. "The order of operations you reported when she arrived at the forward camp was specific: the Rift opened, the Mark came to life, and then the Rift closed. It also reacted to the presence of another Rift you passed when you brought here here?"

"Yes," Leliana confirms. "There was a spark from it, but it seemed to cause her pain, and we did not wish to risk her by lingering."

"A decision which likely saved her life." He returns his attention to the group at large. "When the Breach stirs, so does the Mark. When it grows, so, to, does the Mark. The reactions are instantaneous and perfectly in sync. 

"In essence, you may consider the Breach to be little more than an exceptionally large Rift - artificial punctures in the veil, forced into being through unnatural means. Their signatures are identical, and as you have allowed me to study the tears in the veil, I can confirm that the particular magic of the Mark is no different. All three are connected," he says with precise slowness.  
  
"If the Mark was able not merely to _respond_ to a Rift, but to control it, to close it.... If I may, have you learned anything new of what caused the explosion?"

"If the dwarf we saw in that vision still lives, he has vanished without a trace," Leliana says darkly. "We have found no dwarves among the dead, but with as much as was turned to ash, that means little. I will not stop searching until we have an answer one way or another," she vows.

They still know nothing of the artifact, then. That is something. The lack of any new information, any clue, is frustrating, but it isn't until an image appears unbidden in his mind of her lying there unconscious in her bed, her brow creased in pain and beaded with sweat, that it takes actual control to hide any reaction.

He goes on, spoon-feeding them what they need to act as required. "Regardless, with what has been observed thus far, I believe that just as the Mark was able to seal the Rift, it may also be able to stop the Breach. It may be the key to stopping all of this."

The Commander swells with anger, but before he can vomit it up, Solas disarms him: "This will all be moot, however, if she does not wake soon."

He doesn’t need to repeat what has been said. Every moment the child sleeps, it becomes less likely she will wake. Their only clue, the only hope they have so far of stopping the literal hole in the sky from swallowing the world, is the very thing that is killing her, even as it keeps her in so much pain that no sedative is able to shut it out entirely. And every moment they turn around, there is a new complication.

In the worst of her suffering, the child flails in her slumber. That was how they found out that, tiny and gracefully-boned as she is - if proportioned more like a human child than an elf - that girl is stronger than any fully grown man. She has snapped restraints, cracked a bed frame, and in one of her worst fits, eight fully-armored men were barely able to restrain her.

The question has been raised, as it must be, if she is not merely something which  _looks_ like a child. She is otherwordly in her beauty, and the reticence of everyone involved to even truly consider that she may be something sinister is itself testament to the fact that that may be exactly the case, whether she might be a product of some unholy magic, an abomination the likes of which the world has never seen, or something they have not even thought to consider.

They have no clues. No one would have brought a child to the Conclave; she fell from the sky bearing nothing but the Mark and her strange clothing, no clue as to where she might have come from. She speaks in her sleep sometimes, but the words are so garbled that they cannot even make out what language it might be.

Cassandra breaks the silence with an unusually kind voice. "You should rest, Solas. You have worked tirelessly, and we are grateful for it. But I fear she is in the hands of the Maker now. As are we all."

Solas takes his leave, closing the door behind him, and no one speaks for a time.

Cullen looks around at the others, lost in their own thoughts. "Tell me we are not considering this," he says, his voice deadly quiet with incredulity, with accusation.

“What choice do we have?” Cassandra asks, hiding back none of her bone-deep sorrow. “None of us would wish this on an innocent, Cullen. None of us would wish for any of this. But we are here all the same.”

“She is a _child,_ Cassandra!" He yells. "She can't be more than seven years old! She--” For a moment, he seems to lose the ability to speak, too angry to form words. “She was _thrown out of the sky!_   We don’t know who she is, where she comes from, Maker knows what she’s been through, what must have been _done_ to her! We don’t even know if she’ll live through the remainder of the day, and if she does, you want to drag her out into that hell the moment she wakes up? No! Absolutely not!”  
  
_“What choice do we have?”_  Cassandra yells back, her voice desperate and accusing and close to unsteady. “Our _world_ has been attacked, and the one person who was holding it together by its last threads was slaughtered alongside anyone who had the courage or wisdom to step forward and seek a solution, despite their fear and hatred! Our best is being weeded out!  Every side is out for blood, and the sole clue we have to stopping that _thing_ in the sky so we can live long enough to try to fix this lies in the palm of a child's hand! Do you think I am not horrified? Do you think I find this _acceptable?"_   She demands with scathing disgust. "Would it be better for her if we allow the Breach to finish the work of whoever destroyed the Conclave and swallow the world whole? 

"If you have a better solution, I pray you give it to us, because I for one would take _anything_ over this! It is unspeakable! But if you don't have a better option, then do not pretend it is not our only chance!”  
  
Cullen looks at her. He shakes his head. “This is how it happens, Cassandra.” His voice is quieted, his temper banked into something smaller, with finer, sharper edges. “You make--" He bites the words off and corrects himself, _"We_  make a bad decision for the greater good, because we believe it to be all we can truly do. And here we are." He spreads his arms, indicating not the room, but _everything._ "The world cannot be repaired by the same mistakes that broke it. We cannot sacrifice an innocent for the greater good. There _has to be something,"_  he enunciates, "some way to... I don't know, to get the magic out of her, to... to...." He slips a hand over his face, every line of him painted in weariness. "I don’t know. I don't know." He says it almost as if begging forgiveness.

“...But I do,” Leliana says quietly. "I saw her fall, and I saw the woman in the Rift. She glowed with pure, holy light. I have not been so certain of anything since I first heard the call of the Maker many years ago, the call that told me to join the the Hero of Ferelden when she was no one but a traitor, blamed for the death of the King. The call that lead me to the remains of His holy Bride, and to the spirits of those who journeyed with Her in life." Her eyes blaze with quiet conviction. "It was Her in sky." She looks at each of them in turn, holding their gazes. "It was Andraste.

"This child is not what she seems, and I do not believe her cursed with this magic. I believe her  _gifted_ with it. She was sent here to save us. I would stake everything on it."

Abruptly, she pulls back into herself and relaxes her posture. "Or, if you prefer," she adds coolly, "we can make this very simple: when she wakes, she can tell us herself either way.”

“And if she does not wake?” Josephine asks, her voice worried and gentle.  
  
“Then our only hope dies with her," Leliana replies bitterly, "and we deserve no less.”  
  
Cullen clenches his jaw. “And if she wakes, Leliana, and does not have the answers you wish to hear, yet the fact remains that a _child_  possesses this magic? What will your choice be then?”  
  
For a long moment, the two simply stare at each other. Eventually, Leliana looks down, thoughtful.  
  
“I honestly do not know whether to admire the survival of your naivety, Commander, or to pity you for it.

"I know I am right. I know what that child is, and what she is here to do. But to answer your _hypothetical_ scenario: I will do what is necessary to save this world, as I have sworn to do. I will serve as I did for Justinia. I will rise when others will not and I will do what others cannot.”

 

*     *     *

 

Solas returned directly to her bedside and relieved the woman standing watch.

He hadn’t wished to leave in the first place, but it had been necessary, and of course, he has a part to play. More than perhaps anything else at the moment, it is crucial he not be removed, not now. 

He sits at her bedside on the simple, hard chair granted him, gentle fingertips feathering over her golden hair. It was darker at the ends when she arrived, and her eyes a different hue, but it seems he was the only one to notice. The others saw what they wished, as we so often do.

She is so small, impossibly small, as if an incautious touch might cause her to crumble under his hand.

He frowns and takes his fingers away.

He has searched for her in the Fade, of course, but whether due to the Anchor or any number of other things, she is nowhere to be found.

His Mark sputters in her palm, and her face contorts. He adjusts the blankets around her uselessly and sits back, posture failing. He drops his face into his hands, allowing himself a single moment here to be loose and real, behind the safety of the closed door.

In elvhen, he tells her, quietly, “I am so sorry, little one.”

Useless words. Useless words spoken too many times in the privacy of his own mind over the last year. But as he feels her there, steady and impossible and somehow still alive, his remorse hardens itself again into cool resolve. It skirts dangerously close to anger, and the words change:

_“I will fix this. I will fix it all.”_

And if she will only wake, nothing in the world can stop him, least of all the overreaching child "magister" playing at godhood.

The Dread Wolf ended the Evanuris. Corypheus may have been the vehicle of a terrible surprise, of a sickening delay, but he has no idea the power at which he grasps. Solas has been playing this game much longer, and with far greater stakes.

 

*     *     * **  
** **  
**

She does wake, later that very day, during one of the few moments Solas has left her side. She scares a gaggle of laysisters half to death, in fact, when she quietly opens her door and looks up at them in the vast nave, confusion written over every line of her little face.

She asks a question, short, and simple, and completely unintelligible, her high voice clear and confounded: “No ke ni loa a pau?”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The language is spectacularly butchered Hawaiian. 
> 
> Normally I’d pick something that doesn’t use any Latin characters since the tongue is supposed to be so alien, buuut… honestly this is just way more fun for me. xD 
> 
> I might also kind of be in the middle of an obsession with Hawaii right now.
> 
> Either way.
> 
> #It'sFanfic,ICanGetAwayWithBasicallyAnything
> 
> -
> 
> I found myself imagining what Solas would think, if he'd been listening in on what was said after he left, particularly by Cullen.
> 
> All I could come up with was pity, and sorrow, and a thought something like, "They parrot emotion so well."
> 
> \- - - - -
> 
> 1/19/19: Cullen: 'She can't be more than eight!' -> 'She can't be more than seven!' I looked up pictures of childrens, eight was too old-looking.  
> 6/11/19: Tweaks to Solas's solo scene to reflect a more developed understanding of his character


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Vocab to know:  
> (I won’t translate other stuff, but these tend to be known in the fandom, so I don’t see any reason for anyone to be left in the dark)  
>  **Ma nuvenin/ma nuven** = as you wish (more and less formal, respectively)  
>  **Da** = small or little (as in da’lan, “small [female] person,” aka “[female] child,” or da’assan, “little arrow”)
> 
> ...This makes it seem like I know my way around Elvhen. I really don't, that language is the stuff of nightmares.
> 
> \- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The voice is not right.

Little fingers go to soft throat.

This is not right, either.

As one of the leysisters runs toward the far end of the building and the rest of them hunch on their knees, heads bent and hands clasped in benediction, the little girl backs into the room, her eyes wide, her golden brows pulling together.

The lock quietly clicks into place.

 

*     *     *

 

Soft voices and gentle words don’t get her to open the door. They have to have the key fetched.

They try not to crowd her; Cassandra goes in, her heart reaching out to the child. The others hover on the other side of the doorway. Josephine’s delicate fingers are over her lips.

The little girl is sitting in her dressing gown on the floor, heels tucked under her thighs, staring at the magic in her hand as if she doesn’t even know the others are there. She doesn’t look afraid, though. She looks lost.

Gently, numbly, she pokes at the Mark and winces, though the gesture is small, contained.

Cassandra crouches down before the child, making herself smaller.

“Are you alright?” She asks gently. “My name is Cassandra.” The girl's eyebrows twitch. “I am here to help you. What is your name?”

The girl looks up. She is gone from her own face. But when she meets the Seeker’s eyes, sudden recognition flares.

Cold fingers brush upward behind Cassandra’s ribs.

These are not the eyes of a child, not in any way.

“Pentaghast,” the girl breathes. "Cassandra Pentaghast." Her voice is a quiet sunrise, light and pale, dew on the petals of a new lily.

Cassandra’s eyes go round.

“You know her?” Leliana asks, incredulous.

“No,” Cassandra denies, stymied. “I have never seen her before, I--”

Solas appears at the back of the group, pushing his way through. “Move. _Move!”_   He gets into the room, quickly and gracefully stepping around Cassandra to kneel before the girl, his eyes on her face and his hands on her delicate shoulders.

Her eyes go wide, her mouth slack. She takes a single, involuntary step away.

“Arani,” he says, and his voice is so, so gentle. He murmurs to her in a language Josephine and Leliana vaguely recognize as elven, his head lowered so their eyes are level. Before he can get much at all out, though, the little girl is pushing away from him, sucking in breath and slapping his hands away, something like panic mixed with horror or even anger on her face.

“A.... A’ole,” she breathes. “A’ole’oe.” She seems to find her voice, and yells, “A’ole’oe! Mai hoopa mai iaʻu!”

“Solas, get out of here,” Cassandra orders, only barely reining her tone in for the sake of the girl, and he is pulled up and from the room so fast the others don’t see the stricken look on his face.

Cassandra holds her hands up in a calming gesture, giving soft reassurances to the little girl.

“He will not return if you do not wish to see him. It is alright, you are safe, I promise. No one here will hurt you. You are safe.” She repeats the assurance over and over in soothing tones.

The girl’s eyes stay glued to where Solas disappeared around the corner from the door. Harsh, quiet words can be heard between him, Leliana and Cullen. She watches as if she can still see him, but rather than afraid or angry, she looks bewildered.

Cassandra tears her glove off and carefully touches the little girl’s arm to reassure her, and to get her attention back. When she does not panic as she did with Solas, Cassandra offers her arms to the child in an embrace.

The girl shakes her head, and the presence, the intelligence behind her eyes is astounding. She looks as if she is trying to piece something together, something beyond Cassandra or anyone else in the Chantry.

Gently, Cassandra says, “...Do you understand what I am saying? You know my name.” She touches her chest and says, “Cassandra.” She indicates the girl and asks, “What is yours?”

The little girl’s eyes narrow in confusion, but she opens her mouth as if to answer. Her brow furrows, and she closes it.

“He aha.... Pehea....” She looks down at her marked hand and swallows. Her eyes go distant. “Ka'Āpana,” she murmurs.

The Mark flares and sputters, and she collapses, a choked off sound in her throat, her face contorting in pain.

Solas’s voice raises outside the door, “I must see to her!”

“For all we know,” Leliana snaps, her voice hushed and deadly, “you have been making her worse!”

Irate, he raises his voice, “I have--”

But he is cut off by a warbling cry of pain when it breaks past the girl’s lips, and there is no longer any question. They let him go.

He pushes his way back into the room on hurried feet and drops to his knees next to her, reaching for her scarred hand. His magic pours into the Anchor and stills the sharpest edges of pain until a massive impact is heard in the distance and it calms on its own, leaving her panting, her brow clammy. He dabs gently at it with his sleeve before he can think better of it.

He nearly just lost his temper and gave himself away. If she hadn’t cried out when she had....

He would smile if he did not know her pain was genuine. He can taste it in the air. It sits like bile at the back of his throat.

She looks up at him, and her pure gold eyes lock onto his. They others think them solid orbs of filigreed color, but the pupils are there, shrunken to pinholes. She has the eyes of a night hunter. For a moment, he would almost swear....

“...Solas,” she says, her voice small and hesitant, but absolutely certain. There is a hard edge of something like accusation in it.

He answers in Elvhen, his relief something only she should be able to read: “Yes.” His voice soft and familiar and too uncertain to be relieved. “Yes. I will not hurt you, I would never hurt you. I am so sorry if I frightened you. You are disoriented, I understand. The magic in your hand....”

He carries on, but the girl looks more and more befuddled as he does. “ʻO ia aneiʻo Elvhen?” She asks. She gives a little shake of her head. “ʻAʻole au e'ōlelo iā Elvhen, Solas.”

He blinks at her.

The others watch, tense, but the child does not seem frightened of him any longer. Wary, perhaps, even... bitter? Resentful? But not afraid.

From the back of the group, Cullen says in a dark undertone, “It seems my question stands, Leliana.” This girl will be hurt over his dead body.

His voice calls the girl’s attention from Solas, and for an instant, she looks at Cullen - the presence there shoots through him sharp as ice water - before her eyes catch sight of something high over his shoulder.

She looks at her marked hand for a long moment.

With a sigh and a pinched expression, she pushes to her feet. She stumbles slightly, and Solas holds out a hand to her, but she jerks back from it like a skittish animal. After taking a moment to right herself, she walks on sure feet toward the doorway. She moves as if she expects the others to get out of her way.

They do.

“Hele,” she says. Her clear little voice is grim. So is her face. She pauses for just a moment and tips her head back just slightly - only Solas hears the near-silent breath in through her nose - then rights it and moves deeper into the Chantry.

Cullen reaches a hand out to still her, but Leliana bars him with a gesture, her eyes intense on the girl’s back. “Wait,” she says. “Let us see where she leads.”

To a store room, as it happens, where she doesn’t seem to search for anything so much as retrieve it, as if she arranged all the inventory herself.

Into the others' hands she piles dried pieces of meat and fruit, as well as a large wedge of hard cheese.

“Is she hungry?” Cassandra murmurs.

“Wouldn’t she be _eating_ it if she was hungry?” a graveled voice replies from next to her, just as quiet.

“Varric,” the girl says as if to herself, without so much as a glance over her shoulder. “A Bianca,” she adds in a more cordial tone. She mutters something else, but it’s unintelligible.

At roughly the same moment, Cassandra exclaims, the spell of puzzling over the girl momentarily broken, “Varric! Maker, how long have you been _lurking_   there?”

“Uh....” he says, clearly unsettled by the kid. Then he seems to decide he’s better off just... not touching the fact that the girl who fell from the sky knows him by voice and opts instead to reply to Cassandra.

“I’m not _lurking,_ Seeker. The whole town knows she’s up. I just figured it might be nice for her to see someone who knows how to make an expression other than ‘pissed off and mildly constipated.’ Then here I find all of you standing around staring like you’re watching a sloth demon take the King of Ferelden for a turn around the ballroom.” He pauses, then sighs. “I guess it’s true about the language, then?”

“How do you know that?” Cassandra hisses. Then she makes an exasperated sound. “Never mind, I do not want to know. Just... be quiet. If you can manage it without giving yourself a stroke.”

“Oh, you know me,” he murmurs, watching the girl with just as much preoccupation as everyone else. “Not one for idle chatter.”

She snorts quietly.

When the girl finishes in the store room, she leads them outside - Cullen barely manages to foist his burden off on Cassandra in time to shrug out of his stoled mantle and get it over the child’s shoulders before the doors are opened and the frigid wind is biting at their skin.

She doesn’t acknowledge the addition, other than to pick up its ends so it doesn’t drag on the earth. She hasn’t so much as glanced at any of them since leaving her sick room.

After another moment’s pause and another slight tip of her chin, she sets off once more.

“Do we have any idea where we’re going?” Varric asks.

“Not in the slightest,” Cullen replies, as if this might all be a delightfully quirky outing, but for the facts of the thing.

Sunlight glints off the child’s golden hair as she walks purposefully through the streets. People stop what they’re doing and drop to their knees, some prostrating themselves on the frozen ground. Soldiers join them, or at the very least stand at attention. More and more people spill out from buildings and side streets to line their path. She seems to ignore them, but Leliana and Solas see the way her posture tightens and becomes deliberate. It’s hard to pick out with her small stature, never mind the fact that she is so bundled in fabric, but it’s the shape of someone much, much older. Of one who knows what it is to bear weight that is not wished.

They reach Solas’s cabin, and she goes in without preamble, repeating the process from the store room. She goes directly to where his pack is stored in an empty crate and removes it. From its weight as it dangles from her hand, he has not fully unpacked, and his bedroll and cooking supplies are still tied to the outside.

She removes three books from a shelf of many, wraps them in his spare set of clothing from a drawer, and adds a small collection of pouches from another. Finally, she takes a fresh tunic from a bureau and lays it on the bed, indicating the food should be placed on it. That done, she makes a bundle of it and adds that to the top of the pack, then secures its stays and fastenings.

“...Apparently we’re going somewhere?” The dwarf ventures.

“Or one of us is,” Leliana murmurs to herself in Orlesian.

“You do not think....” Josephine says, trailing off, remembering the way the little girl had reacted to Solas.

Safely behind the others, Solas' lips thin into a line.

The child hoists the pack over a shoulder as if there were nothing in it at all, despite the fact that it is bulging and nearly as large as she is. Cullen tries to to take the burden from her, but she waves him off impatiently and walks out of the cabin. He arches a brow and exchanges a look with Cassandra, who just shrugs. May as well see where this is leading.

She leads them this time to the gates of Haven, plucking a loaf of bread from a basket as they pass, still steaming from the ovens and sitting in the snow before a prostrate elven woman, then out to where the well-trodden path ends and the snow begins. Her intent does indeed seem clear, and it is met with sinking feelings in more than one person.

At last, she turns to the others, but she doesn’t acknowledge them - her eyes go straight to Solas, more hard and cold than they have any right to be in a face so soft and round with youth.

She tosses the pack to him as if it were no more than a piece of fruit, then the bread and, holding his eyes, extends an arm, unwavering, and points into the distance.

She says a single, frigid word: “Hele.”

Solas feels as if he has been gutted. He isn’t certain he would have thought himself capable of still feeling such a thing before this moment.

Cassandra steps between them and gives a shake of her head, saying to the girl firmly but not unkindly, “No. Solas saved your life. You would be dead if--”

 _”Hele,”_ she repeats, enunciates, interrupting the woman. Her eyes do not leave Solas’s, just as his do not waver from hers. “Inā makemakeʻoe iaʻu e noho, ponoʻo ia e hele.”

She gives another jab of her finger into the distance.  _“Hele,_ Solas.” The words are just as hard, just as unrelenting, and they seem far too angry to be impersonal.

“You know her,” Leliana says, her voice unreadable but for the hint of accusation.

“I do not,” he answers readily.

“And yet she clearly seems to know you.”

“And the Seeker, and Varric, and his _crossbow,_ as well as the layout of your base of operations down to the last box," he snaps. "I can only guess at her reaction to me. It makes no more sense than anything else which has occurred in the last few days.”

“Can we take this inside, maybe?” Varric suggests in an undertone, covertly glancing around. “I mean--”

The little girl cuts him off, her eyes gone cold and pitiless on Solas. She rambles off quick, angry words, ending with the one they now understand, over-enunciated and injected with something close to venom: _Go._

Josephine tries to speak to the girl in the few languages she knows, resorting even to the odd phrase in ones she doesn’t, but none of them get any more recognition from her than Common has.

Cullen looks from the apostate, to the girl, and back. He’s torn, but Cassandra is right: she would be dead if not for Solas. “How are we to explain this to her when she can’t understand a word we’re saying?” he asks tightly.

This is met with silence, until Solas says simply, “...You aren’t.”

This strange standoff between him and the child continues for another long minute. No one moves, no one speaks. Her breath spills visibly into the air as if strangely hot.

Then, Solas says three quiet words to her, his voice strange: “Ma nuven, da’nua.”

Finally, finally he looks away from her. Sparing not so much as a glance for the others, he shoulders his pack, and he walks away from them.

“She has made her requirement abundantly clear,” he says, volume raising as the distance between them grows, “and her presence here is far more vital than my own. May your Maker be with you, Inquisition. You may well need the power of a god before this is over.”

The little girl stands, silent and still, as he shrinks into the distance. Something subtle in her seems to uncoil and relax the further he gets.

No one, not even Varric, can find a thing to say. They are disturbed and disquieted. But still there is that tug of her, as if she is the sun, and they plants beneath her light.

When finally Solas is gone from sight, the tension melts from her shoulders and she seems to become someone else entirely. She pulls Cullen's mantle around herself as if it is a warm, cherished blanket. After another moment watching the spot where the mage vanished, as if satisfying herself that he isn't going to reappear at any moment, she turns just enough to look at the others, each in turn.

"Solas ...ʻoi aku kahi mamao mai kahi mea āu i mālama ai." She glances back to the line of trees into which he faded long enough to say, "He haʻaheoʻo ia, noʻonoʻo, hoʻopunipuniʻia, a nui loa, he mea make loa. ... Ua haʻiʻiaʻoiaiʻo ia. No kēia manawa." A shudder seems to go over her, and she pulls the mantle tighter still around herself. She gives a sideways look to Cullen, almost assessing, then walks up to his side and leans into it. He puts a hesitant, uncertain arm around her. She closes her eyes and buries her face against his hip.

After a long moment, she turns against him with a sigh, still safe in the circle of his arm, to look back toward the Breach in the distance.

She pulls away and begins walking, saying, her voice grave and weary and perhaps, somehow, even a little dry: “ʻAʻole i ka hopena o ka haki maoli, akā manaʻo wau e hele mālama i kēlā.”

Her words are alien, but her meaning seems clear: _Let us deal with this.  
_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All credit as ever to [Project Elvhen](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3719848/chapters/8237548) for any words I use that weren’t in DA:I, and for basically _any_ understanding I have of the language, frail as it is. This dude is an Elder Nerd, First Class. 
> 
> \- - -
> 
> In case you try to be crafty, the Hawaiian doesn’t translate back to the original English via Google Translate. It comes back maybe 5% accurate. Translations of what she said (and one of the things Solas said) is in the comments, though, if you _simply must cheat._
> 
> If you prefer immersion… stay strong, my friends *fistbump.* (Personally, that’s what I would do. ...At least until much later in the story xD)
> 
> \- - -
> 
> 6/11/19: Tweaks, with changes to the Solas departure to reflect a course adjustment in the story/with the MC. Changes are first draft.


End file.
